In a modern vehicle, many leads or wires are used to electrically interconnect electrical components including lights, electronic gauges, radio, message center, power antennae relays, intermittent windshield wiper controls, electronic air conditioning switches, and relays, among other components interconnected by leads and wiring to electrical sources and/or sensors.
Because of the sheer number of wires used to electronically interconnect components in a vehicle, wiring harnesses--taped or otherwise constrained groups of wires--are typically used to arrange the wires in groups. The groups of wires are attached the vehicle and routed along its substructure in an ordered arrangement of what would otherwise be a spaghetti-like entanglement of wires. The ordered arrangement facilitates tracing the wires for proper connections during assembly and for trouble shooting connections during repair. Often an ordered arrangement includes grouping wires in subarrangements, for example, leads from a radio to speakers may be grouped together. These subarrangements pass along common routes with other subarrangements or wire groups. Several such wire groups may be attached to the vehicle at common sites.
Manually attaching and routing wire groups is a tedious and labor intensive task. Furthermore, owing in part to the tediousness and labor intensiveness of the task, manual manipulation of groups of wires during assembly of the vehicle and its wiring system often results in damaging wires. Because of the number of wires and wire groups, quick, efficient, and easy attachment of wire groups to the vehicle structure is preferred.